


The Mercy

by epistolic



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/pseuds/epistolic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a secret knowledge within her heart: she is not, and never will be willingly, a mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mercy

The first child she gives birth to is dead.

For the longest while she lies back on the pillows, catching her breath. There is a sickening moistness between her legs. She is sore all over, like the first time she took a true beating, in a back alley in Rio on her very first field assignment: green, but not going down. She survived that one, and she’ll survive this one too.

Albert clasps her hand too tightly. “It’s alright. We can try again. Just rest.”

Albert worships her. There are tears standing in his eyes. She doesn’t tell him that she isn’t at all upset – that, deep down, if she is honest with herself, she is relieved.

There is a secret knowledge within her heart: she is not, and never will be willingly, a mother.

\--

Rodrigues is sitting on her living room couch.

He is bleeding everywhere. She is midway through removing her coat; pauses, catching his silhouette there and his shadow, boulder-steady on the tile.

She hangs her coat up on the rack. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing here?”

“I’ve brought you a present.” Rodrigues is humming. His voice is a pleasant one, lilting and musical, and it’s easy to forget sometimes that he is one of the most dangerous men in the world. “I put it on your bedside table. Albert is asleep, but don’t worry – I didn’t wake him.”

“There’s blood all over my upholstery.”

“I’ll clean it out before I go.”

She is irritated. She tries to dredge up some sort of worry, some residual fondness, but there is none.

“Get yourself to Medical, for God’s sake,” she snaps at him. “You’re a mess.”

He smiles at her. She knows that he believes in some way or other that she loves him. She raised him after all, trained him up, put his first gun into his hand, his first bullet.

He’s wrong. She doesn’t love him at all. It’s a mistake they all make.

“You have half an hour to get out of here,” she says, and then she leaves him be.

\--

The second child is easier. It slips from her with startling effortlessness. Its shrill cry fills the air, and the sound stirs up something in her chest that feels like dread.

Albert is transfixed. He holds the bundle like he’s holding his heart: soft and bruisable.

“What are we going to call her, Em?” he whispers.

She doesn’t care. She is thinking about a mission in Madrid. She is thinking about helicopters, and the roar of the wind at altitude; gunshots and the thrill of a knife in her hand. Whatever they call her, she is going to tie her down. She is going to ruin her mother. She already has.

“You name her,” she says. 

She turns her face into the pillow; she closes her eyes.

\--

This is how she ends up at a desk in June, sifting through personnel files, half bored out of her mind.

This is how she ends up meeting James Bond.

She gives him a glance out of the corner of her eye. He is standing to attention, spine rigid and looking straight ahead. He looks ordinary – just your typical battered recruit – just typical. She feels a certain dull disappointment.

“Your mother,” she says, combing the file with her fingers. If there is a flinch in his eye she doesn’t acknowledge it. “She shot herself in the head on the 24th of December, when you were eight.”

He waits, suspended. She hasn’t asked a question.

“Did you see it?”

“No,” he says. Clipped and to-the-point.

“But your father did.”

“I don’t know,” he says. Adds: “Ma’am.”

“You don’t know.”

“It was a long time ago.”

She’s daring him to wonder why all of this is relevant. Everything is relevant: you are defined by the things you cannot talk about. By the things you cannot allow yourself to admit.

“Why are you applying for this position, Mr Bond?” she says.

He looks at her with mild surprise. “Because I can do it.”

She isn’t convinced just yet. The point of the matter is that he’s really too young, and he looks almost like he’s too good at following rules.

Oh, but how he proves her wrong.

\--

The night she gives Rodrigues to the Chinese, she comes home to her daughter crying on the couch.

There are bruises dragging underneath Albert’s eyes. The house seems to radiate panic; her child’s scream is high, rising and falling with an unsteady rhythm. There are toys scattered all across the rug. 

“For God’s sake,” she says. She navigates to the kitchen – dumps her bag on the counter.

Albert trails after her. “I think she’s sick. She’s been like this all day. I can’t get her to stop crying, I’ve tried everything. She’s got a bit of a temperature but it went down after lunch, then as soon as the sun set it climbed up again, she won’t feed – ”

On, and on, and on, and on. 

“Put her into bed,” she cuts in. “You can take her to the doctor’s tomorrow morning.”

“But Em, aren’t you going to even – ”

She meets his eye, stony. “If _you_ can’t stop her crying, what the hell am _I_ expected to do about it?”

She watches the fever-light dull out of his gaze. He’s been running on sleepless, meal-less, hours of tears and dry nappies since breakfast; he has been waiting for her to come home.

She is not, and has never been, the Emma he fell in love with.

\--

Word comes back that Rodrigues is dead. At first they are afraid to tell her, as if it might upset her in some way. But she is certain she doesn’t know what they are worried about.

Tanner hovers beside her desk.

She gives him a spearing glare; she is busy. “Alright, Tanner, I know. Is that all?”

It isn’t that she is heartless. It is only that she knows who she is and who she cannot be. These men, they are drawn to her because they believe that she can offer them something she can’t. They expect salvation: but the fact of it is, she has only ever been able to bring dead children forth into the world.

\--

The gift Rodrigues gave her once was a locket, a golden pendant in the shape of a heart.

She gives it to her daughter, but her daughter loses it.

\--

She doesn’t remember her own mother.

When she was younger, this bothered her. For the longest while she tried to picture her mother’s face. The clear, grey eyes, because she didn’t get them from her father; the strong jaw. The steady sense of calculation. The pragmatism. Her father was an ordinary man, and he bored her in the same way that Albert bores her now. 

It is not always a terrible thing, to be motherless; it can be a mercy to be born hungry. 

She has been hungry her entire life.

The men in her life are all beginning to peel away. Piece by piece, her past is coming undone. Albert, with his plodding disappointment; Rodrigues with his teeth and blood; Bond, the child she plucked from the streets and remade. In a way, she knows they will not outlive her.

She is a woman, and she holds the world in the palm of her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the fact I haven't written a Bond/Q in a while - I just haven't been able to think of a decent plot. If you guys have prompts, please don't hesitate to let me know! You can leave them for me here, in comments, or you can message them to me on LiveJournal. ♥
> 
> Any and all feedback is much appreciated! For updates on any future fics, feel free to add me on [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥
> 
> **I have also started up a Skyfall recs Twitter at[Skyfall_Recs](https://twitter.com/#!/skyfall_recs), if that's something you're interested in then feel free to check it out!**


End file.
